How To Overcome Sin

CHAPTER 10

HOW TO OVERCOME SIN

IN every period of my ministerial life I have found many professed

Christians in a miserable state of bondage, either to the world, the flesh, or

the Devil. But surely this is no Christian state, for the apostle has

distinctly said: “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not

under the law, but under grace.” In all my Christian life I have been pained

to find so many Christians living in the legal bondage described in the

seventh chapter of Romans — a life of sinning, and resolving to reform and

falling again. And what is particularly saddening, and even agonizing, is

that many ministers and leading Christians give perfectly false instruction

upon the subject of how to overcome sin. The directions that are generally

given on this subject, I am sorry to say, amount to about this: “Take your

sins in detail, resolve to abstain from them, and fight against them, if need

be with prayer and fasting, until you have overcome them. Set your will

firmly against a relapse into sin, pray and struggle, and resolve that you

will not fall, and persist in this until you form the habit of obedience and

break up all your sinful habits.” To be sure it is generally added: “In this

conflict you must not depend upon your own strength, but pray for the

help of God.” In a word, much of the teaching, both of the pulpit and the

press, really amounts to this: Sanctification is by works, and not by faith.

I notice that Dr. Chalmers, in his lectures on Romans, expressly maintains

that justification is by faith, but sanctification is by works. Some

twenty-five years ago, I think, a prominent professor of theology in New

England maintained in substance the same doctrine. In my early Christian

life I was very nearly misled by one of President Edwards’s resolutions,

which was, in substance, that when he had fallen into any sin he would

trace it back to its source, and then fight and pray against it with all his

might until he subdued it. This, it will be perceived, is directing the

attention to the overt act of sin, its source or occasions. Resolving and

fighting against it fastens the attention on the sin and its source, and

diverts it entirely from Christ..64

Now it is important to say right here that all such efforts are worse than

useless, and not infrequently result in delusion. First, it is losing sight of

what really constitutes sin; and, secondly, of the only practicable way to

avoid it. In this way the outward act or habit may be overcome and

avoided, while that which really constitutes the sin is left untouched. Sin is

not external, but internal. It is not a muscular act, it is not the volition that

causes muscular action, it is not an involuntary feeling or desire; it must be

a voluntary act or state of mind. Sin is nothing else than that voluntary,

ultimate preference or state of committal to self pleasing out of which the

volition’s, the outward actions, purposes, intentions, and all the things

that are commonly called sin proceed. Now, what is resolved against in

this religion of resolutions and efforts to suppress sinful and form holy

habits? “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” But do we produce love by

resolution? Do we eradicate selfishness by resolution? No, indeed. We

may suppress this or that expression or manifestation of selfishness by

resolving not to do this or that, and praying and struggling against it. We

may resolve upon an outward obedience, and work ourselves up to the

letter of an obedience to God’s commandments. But to eradicate

selfishness from the breast by resolution is an absurdity. So the effort to

obey the commandments of God in spirit — in other words, to attempt to

love as the law of God requires by force of resolution — is an absurdity.

There are many who maintain that sin consists in the desires. Be it so. Do

we control our desires by force of resolution? We may abstain from the

gratification of a particular desire by the force of resolution. We may go

further, and abstain from the gratification of desire generally in the

outward life. But this is not to secure the love of God, which constitutes

obedience. Should we become anchorites, immure ourselves in a cell, and

crucify all our desires and appetites, so far as their indulgence is

concerned, we have only avoided certain forms of sin; but the root that

really constitutes sin is not touched. Our resolution has not secured love,

which is the only real obedience to God. All our battling with sin in the

outward life, by the force of resolution, only ends in making us whited

sepulchers. All our battling with desire by the force of resolution is of no

avail; for in all this, however successful the effort to suppress sin may be,

in the outward life or in the inward desire, it will only end in delusion, for

by force of resolution we cannot love..65

All such efforts to overcome sin are utterly futile, and as unscriptural as

they are futile. The Bible expressly teaches us that sin is overcome by

faith in Christ. “He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,

and redemption.” “He is the way, the truth, and the life.” Christians are

said to “purify their hearts by faith” (

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Acts 15:9). And in

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Acts 26:18

it is affirmed that the saints are sanctified by faith in Christ. In

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Romans

9:31, 32 it is affirmed that the Jews attained not to righteousness “because

they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.” The

doctrine of the Bible is that Christ saves His people from sin through

faith; that Christ’s Spirit is received by faith to dwell in the heart. It is

faith that works by love. Love is wrought and sustained by faith. By faith

Christians “overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil.” It is by faith

that they “quench the fiery darts of the wicked.” It is by faith that they

“put on the Lord Jesus Christ and put off the old man, with his deeds.” It

is by faith that we fight “the good fight,” and not by resolution. It is by

faith that we “stand,” by resolution we fall. This is the victory that

overcometh the world, even our faith. It is by faith that the flesh is kept

under and carnal desires subdued. The fact is that it is simply by faith that

we receive the Spirit of Christ to work in us to will and to do, according to

His good pleasure. He sheds abroad His own love in our hearts, and

thereby enkindles ours. Every victory over sin is by faith in Christ; and

whenever the mind is diverted from Christ, by resolving and fighting

against sin, whether we are aware of it or not, we are acting in our own

strength, rejecting the help of Christ, and are under a specious delusion.

Nothing but the life and energy of the Spirit of Christ within us can save

us from sin, and trust is the uniform and universal condition of the

working of this saving energy within us. How long shall this fact be at

least practically overlooked by the teachers of religion? How deeply

rooted in the heart of man is self-righteousness and self-dependence? So

deeply that one of the hardest lessons for the human heart to learn is to

renounce self-dependence and trust wholly in Christ. When we open the

door by implicit trust He enters in and takes up His abode with us and in

us. By shedding abroad His love He quickens our whole souls into

sympathy with Himself, and in this way, and in this way alone, He

purifies our hearts through faith. He sustains our will in the attitude of

devotion. He quickens and regulates our affections, desires, appetites and

passions, and becomes our sanctification. Very much of the teaching that.66

we hear in prayer and conference meetings, from the pulpit and the press,

is so misleading as to render the hearing or reading of such instruction

almost too painful to be endured. Such instruction is calculated to beget

delusion, discouragement, and a practical rejection of Christ as He is

presented in the Gospel.

Alas! for the blindness that “leads to bewilder” the soul that is longing

after deliverance from the power of sin. I have sometimes listened to legal

teaching upon this subject until I felt as if I should scream. It is astonishing

sometimes to hear Christian men object to the teaching which I have here

inculcated that it leaves us in a passive state, to be saved without our own

activity. What darkness is involved in this objection! The Bible teaches

that by trusting in Christ we receive an inward influence that stimulates

and directs our activity; that by faith we receive His purifying influence

into the very center of our being; that through and by His truth revealed

directly to the soul He quickens our whole inward being into the attitude

of a loving obedience; and this is the way, and the only practicable way, to

overcome sin. But someone may say: “Does not the Apostle exhort as

follows: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is

God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure’?

And is not this an exhortation to do what in this article you condemn?” By

no means. In the

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12th verse of the second chapter of Philippians Paul

says: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my

presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own

salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you, both

to will and to do of His good pleasure.” There is no exhortation to work

by force of resolution, but through and by the inworking of God. Paul had

taught them, while he was present with them; but now, in his absence, he

exhorts them to work out their own salvation, not by resolution but by the

inward operation of God. This is precisely the doctrine of this tract. Paul

had too often taught the Church that Christ in the heart is our

sanctification, and that this influence is to be received by faith, to be guilty

in this passage of teaching that our sanctification is to be wrought out by

resolution and efforts to suppress sinful and form holy habits. This

passage of Scripture happily recognizes both the divine and human agency

in the work of sanctification. God works in us to will and to do; and we,

accepting by faith His inworking, will and do according to His good.67

pleasure. Faith itself is an active and not a passive state. A passive

holiness is impossible and absurd. Let no one say that when we exhort

people to trust wholly in Christ we teach that anyone should be or can be

passive in receiving and cooperating with the divine influence within. This

influence is moral, and not physical. It is persuasion, and not force. It

influences the free will, and consequently does this by truth, and not by

force. Oh! that it could be understood that the whole of spiritual life that

is in any man is received direct from the Spirit of Christ by faith, as the

branch receives its life from the vine. Away with this religion of

resolutions! It is a snare of death. Away with this effort to make the life

holy while the heart has not in it the love of God. Oh! that men would

learn to look directly at Christ through the Gospel and so close in with

Him by an act of loving trust as to involve a universal sympathy with His

state of mind. This, and this alone, is sanctification.